🌎🌍 World Space Week & Pens 🖌️🖋️

[Misfit]

Edwin Hubble was born in Marshfield, Missouri.  On the courthouse lawn is a 1:25 scale version of the Hubble Space Telescope.  I was lucky to get to see it, and take photos with a flip phone back in 2007.  I'm sharing those photos as part of World Space Week.  The Hubble Space Telescope is the size of a school bus.  I read somewhere that the size of Hubble was determined by the size of the Space Shuttle's bay.

 

[Misfit]

On 10/4/2022 at 11:47 AM, jandrew said:

 

Definitely some Interesting pens thus far.

 

I have zero space-themed writing implements. The closest I have is a rotring 600 pencil that isn't space-themed at all but has been used for notes, star chart annotations, and drawing while at my telescope

Then the Rotring has become an unofficial Space pencil. What color is yours?  I got the white 600 version earlier this year. 

[Misfit]

10 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Cool.  The one time I ever got to Cape Canaveral, we took one of the bus tours.  Sadly, when we were down in Florida, there was supposed to be a shuttle launch (and we were told we'd be able to see it all the way down where we were, in Palm Bay, which is south of Melbourne).  But there was some sort of issue that came up and NASA scrubbed the launch.  Trying to remember now if we saw it (at a distance of course) on the launchpad while on the bus tour (we took the one that dealt with current stuff, not the historic stuff like the Mercury & Gemini flights).

My dad was a bit astronomy and radio astronomy buff, and I remember getting to stay up late during the the Apollo 11 moon landing.  And even before that, where we lived where I was little, going up into the second floor to look for satellites in the sky to the south of us as they flew in our vicinity.  Later, when I was older, he set up a telescope in the driveway with a cardboard flat to look at when there was an eclipse (the one that was total in Nova Scotia the early 1970s).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for typos

I sometimes think when I read your posts that you have had the best childhood ever. 

[jandrew]

3 hours ago, Misfit said:

Then the Rotring has become an unofficial Space pencil. What color is yours?  I got the white 600 version earlier this year. 

Mine is a silver 0.5mm --- had it since my undergrad days in the late 80's.

[Catpaws]

this is a very interesting thread.

[Misfit]

@Catpaws I’m glad you found this thread.  I enjoy your posts on other threads we both have found.  

[Catpaws]

@Misfit Thank you😊

[inkstainedruth]

14 hours ago, Misfit said:

Radio Telescopes

https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/radio-telescopes/

 

When I was a kid, we went one summer to the radio telescope array down in Green Bank, West Virginia (my parents would arrange for stuff to visit so we weren't spending the entire day driving).  Must have been the last time we also went down to visit my mom's aunts and uncle in Buckhannon (my great uncle bought a pony really a small horse -- just for the occasion, and my second cousin visiting that day as well and she was too scared of Betty to go on her, but I think somewhere in a box is the photo album from that trip, with the photos of me and my brother both sitting on her (although not actually "riding"...).  

My mom had always been Uncle Clyde's favorite, so I became his favorite by extension, and he was the de facto grandfather on that side of the family to me.  My mom said she always wondered if there had been a will when he died, because she figured if there had been the Farm would have likely have been left to me (I was eight...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Astronymus]

The only spacey stationary I can contribute:

 

A cork rocket. For example to store pens.

    

 

A Space Shuttle set with a ballpoint as exterior tank, two pencils as boosters, an eraser as the Space Shuttle and a ruler with countdown. And erasers in the shape of our planetary system.

 

 

Another eraser set.

 

[inkstainedruth]

13 hours ago, Misfit said:

I sometimes think when I read your posts that you have had the best childhood ever. 

Oh, that trip to Florida wasn't when I was a kid -- that was after I got married.  And on the trip down we got pulled over by a cop in Georgia because we had driven through a bunch of construction zones and there was a lot of dirt on our license plate -- so "OBVIOUSLY" we were drug dealers!  (The fact that we were driving TO Florida, not FROM there, seemed to have completely escaped him -- not to mention the fact that most of the grime on the plate was red Georgia clay.... We couldn't figure out why we were targeted -- there was heavy traffic and we were going with the flow of it, and heard something on the CB about "county mountie at such and such mile marker" and realized that's about where we were, and so I looked around (my husband was driving) and saw the guy in the left lane putting his lights on.  And we're looking at each other going "He can't mean *us* -- we're not DOING anything wrong!"  (My husband made a concerted point of flashing the credit cards in his wallet while digging for his drivers' license...; but I got told over the speaker to stay in the vehicle when I was going grab the registration out of the glove compartment.

Of course, the flip side was while we were driving home and were going to visit his grandmother in the DC area, and somewhere in VA some trucker said something on the CB about the two chicks in whatever car we were driving -- probably either my old Dodge Omni or one of the Saturns) and my husband got on and said "One of those chicks has a BEARD!" (the guy saw us from behind, apparently...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[wallylynn]

1 hour ago, Astronymus said:

And erasers in the shape of our planetary system.
 

Another eraser set.

 

The erasers reminded me about how our human sense of scale is totally broken and useless when talking about space. Like the sun is stupidly huge. Pluto is stupidly far away.

[jandrew]

Just for fun, here's a shot of tonight's moon --- getting pretty close to full so pretty washed out, but still some contrast along the terminator (note, hand-held phone pic at eyepiece):

[Misfit]

@jandrew that is spectacular. Thank you so very much for sharing it. Beautiful. 

[Astronymus]

13 hours ago, wallylynn said:

The erasers reminded me about how our human sense of scale is totally broken and useless when talking about space. Like the sun is stupidly huge. Pluto is stupidly far away.

Our sun is quite small. But size isn't the same as mass.

 

https://www.schoolsobservatory.org/learn/astro/stars/class/starsize

[Misfit]

@Astronymus Thank you for sharing the star comparisons. Very enlightening. 😆

[Misfit]

[Misfit]

This is a screenshot from an online seller that shows the Space connection.

[Misfit]

It’s day four of World Space Week. I’m sharing a few jewelry items I’ve bought over time. I found the Moon and galaxy necklaces on Etsy. I have one for Jupiter in my Wishlist. The Apollo capsule pin arrived yesterday. I got it on amazon. 
 

[inkstainedruth]

15 minutes ago, Misfit said:

  I should ink up my Sailor Purple Cosmos!  Wasn't even thinking....  (It's been another rollercoaster week, and not in a good way, like actually getting to ride a rollercoaster...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Misfit]

More for day 4. 
For those of us old enough to have memories of Apollo 11, please share yours. 
 

I remember my Mom taking my older brothers and me out on the front porch. She indicated the Moon, and told us there were men on the Moon right now. I don’t remember TV coverage  

 

 

 

Who got to experience totality during the Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017?  Please share what it was like at your location. And if you have other eclipse memories, please share those. 
 

My location was near, but not in the totality area. So we drove just under 40 miles to get to an area with totality. Of all the days in August to have rain, it was that day. However, it cleared as the Moon started covering a “bite” of the Sun. It didn’t get nighttime dark, but more like sunset. It was amazing to see. We had 2 minutes and 22 seconds of totality.  Such a spectacular sight, like nothing else.